


Seventh Time's the Charm

by GinnyBloomPotter



Category: Leverage
Genre: (I don't think there's much detail though), (but only a little) - Freeform, Angst, Attempt at Humor, Bickering, Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Cute, During Canon, During Season 5, Eliot Spencer needs a hug, Eliot Spencer's Cooking, Eliot-typical Angst, First Dates, Flirting, Fluff, Getting Together, Grumpy Eliot Spencer, Hospitals, Humor, Hurt Eliot Spencer, Love Confessions, OT3, Other, Pining, Protective Alec Hardison, Protective Eliot Spencer, Protective Parker, Robbery, accidental love confession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28253430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinnyBloomPotter/pseuds/GinnyBloomPotter
Summary: If at first you don't succeed...ORAn attempted robbery at the brewpub turns out pretty well for all involved. Well, except the robbers.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 16
Kudos: 150
Collections: 2020 Leverage Secret Santa Exchange





	Seventh Time's the Charm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coffeesuperhero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/gifts).



> Here you go, E! I hope you like this Secret Santa gift! I took your prompt of "interrupted dates" and adapted it into a story I'd been working on months ago that I never managed to get very far in. 
> 
> Rated T for some foul language and canon-typical violence.

The worst part about all of this was that there was no con, no job, no mark. He didn’t get hurt trying to fix anything or save anything. 

No, this all happened because they had, for once,  _ accidentally _ stumbled upon a robbery.

Not on purpose. Not accidentally on purpose. Not even while pursuing a bigger or smaller threat. Just… completely accidentally. 

It was just supposed to be dinner. And it had been going so well too, and by that Eliot meant without him feeling like the third wheel he sometimes felt he was when Parker and Hardison asked him to hang out. He’d cooked up two steaks to the perfect temperature, and then overcooked one for Hardison, and the risotto had come out sensationally. He’d even gotten the two of them to eat  _ vegetables _ , with his broccoli & string bean salad that they’d devoured without even needing prompting. Dessert, too, had gone over well, although Eliot had figured he wouldn’t have any trouble getting those two to eat something as sweet as the berry sorbet and coconut panna cotta he’d whipped up. 

It was  _ just  _ supposed to be dinner. 

Eliot must have been getting soft, too comfortable, because when the masked gunmen broke into the brew pub as Hardison helped Eliot clear away the dishes, he hadn’t at all been prepared for it. 

Okay, so maybe they hadn’t stumbled upon a robbery so much as a robbery stumbled upon  _ them.  _

The bullet that ripped through his abdomen didn’t stop him from taking out and disarming all four of those gunmen. In fact, it barely even registered. Busy as he was tying up the intruders and pulling off their masks, he didn’t even remember he was bleeding until he’d lost enough blood to start feeling dizzy. 

He shoved a tea towel over the bullet wound and proceeded to mostly forget about it while he made sure that Parker and Hardison were okay. It only took a brief glance to tell him that; they were both looking a little scared and shaky, but there was no blood anywhere, and no pain registered in their faces.

For a man who didn’t too much subscribe to religion, Eliot sure was being very praiseful of more than one deity for that. 

No one wanted to call the police. They hated dealing with the police. That was more Nate’s forte than anything else, and so instead of dealing with emergency services themselves, Parker put in a call to their Mastermind while Hardison pulled out the laptop stashed behind the counter and started running their faces through his facial recognition software. 

As the adrenaline rush faded, the pain started pushing through, and the dizziness only got worse. The towel squished as he pushed it harder against the bullet wound, already saturated with blood, and it was agonizing to put so much pressure. He did it anyway, and bit back the pained groan more out of habit than any real desire to hide his injury. 

Parker was the first to realize he’d been hit, and that was only once Eliot had fallen to a knee as the blood started falling in drips from the towel. In seconds, she had retrieved another towel and raced to his side. She barely had to touch him before he was on his back and she was pulling the soaked towel from his stomach and replacing it with the fresh one. 

“It’s fine,” he slurred as she applied pressure to the wound. “I’ll be fine, Parker.”

“A gunshot wound gets treated by applying pressure until medical professionals can get here,” Parker replied automatically, sounding like she’d memorized that from  _ A Thief’s Guide to Criminal Wounds. _ It wasn’t a real book, but maybe it should be. 

“What’s this about gunshot wounds?” Hardison interjected, turning from his computer. His face paled, and he left the laptop on the counter and ran over.

“Calm down,” Eliot insisted. 

Hardison laughed humorlessly. “I’m calm, Eliot. That’s me. Mr. Calm. Not as calm as  _ you _ , but we can’t all take getting shot as lightly as you do. There’s a  _ lot  _ of blood, El.”

“Call Chicken Parm,” Parker ordered, and Hardison nodded, pulling out a phone and dialing the number of their friendly neighborhood doctor. It wouldn’t be the first time James Robertson had stitched up a bullet wound on the sly, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. 

Parker vanished and returned seconds later with a fresh towel, and Eliot watched the blood drip from the second used one as she pulled it away. 

Hardison was right, Eliot thought. It sure  _ was  _ a lot of blood. Probably hit the spleen, he noted, taking stock of where exactly the bullet had landed itself. Which wasn’t the worst injury he’d ever sustained, but it did mean this wasn’t just gonna be a simple stitch-and-run job. A hospital trip was in order. 

Oh  _ joy. _

**____________________________________________________________________________**

Eliot felt a hand holding his as he woke from the anesthetics. 

“Alex?” That was Hardison’s voice he heard, but not his name coming from his mouth. 

Eliot opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was Parker’s face hovering over his own. Her ponytail tickled at his nose, and he wrinkled it and moved back as far as the pillow behind his head would allow. 

“Please, ma’am, don’t crowd him,” an exasperated, unfamiliar voice asked, and Parker scowled and moved away. 

He looked over at the source of the request, and found a tired looking nurse with dark, curly hair smiling at him. 

“Hi, Mr. West. How are you feeling?”

Eliot paused. West. Alex West? That vaguely rang a bell, and it took a second before he remembered that this was the alias Hardison had set up when he’d signed him on to the payroll of the brewpub as the head chef. 

He took a second to take stock, and grimaced. “Fine, mostly,” he responded. “Everything good?”

“Fine,” the nurse said amicably. “A doctor will be in soon to talk to you about what was done and what to expect going forward. In the meantime, I just need to record your vitals and check on the surgical site now that you’re awake.”

He nodded his assent, and she moved in closer, picking up the chart hanging from the end of the bed and recording the information from the monitor by his bedside. Eliot looked over at Hardison and Parker in the meantime. They were watching the nurse closely, following every movement, and Eliot rolled his eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked the nurse, turning away from the other two. She was hanging the chart back up, and she smiled as she quickly but gently pulled the blanket away from his abdomen.

“I’m Carol,” she introduced, gingerly pulling the dressing away from the bullet wound. He stiffened as she did so, but her nimble fingers caused little pain as her nitrile covered hands prodded at the skin surrounding the injury. 

He glanced down at what she was doing, surveying the wound as he did. It looked like it was healing well-- there was swelling and redness, but the bleeding had stopped and there was no pus or sign of infection. He’d definitely had worse. 

“You’re good at this, Carol,” he smiled, the flirting coming second nature. It felt good to get back to something he was good at, and even though he probably looked a mess, he’d be oblivious not to notice the appreciative look she gave his smile. 

“Well, I’d hope so. I’ve been doing this about ten years now.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Now, hang on. There’s no way you’ve been doing this ten years.”

Carol blushed prettily, but shook her head. “You’re a liar, but thanks for trying.” 

“Ain’t no lie, ma’am,” he slipped into his Oklahoma roots a bit more, knowing the cowboy southern gentleman thing worked and worked well. He could feel Parker staring daggers into the side of his head, but he ignored it. 

Carol chuckled and started redressing his abdomen. “Sure, buddy. If you say so. You should know I’m spoken for, Mr. West.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Hardison said. “So is he.” Hardison’s hand tightened around his, and Eliot remembered with a start that he’d been holding it. He wondered if he should be more concerned about being so comfortable with the contact that he’d forgotten about it. 

Carol looked between the two men in surprise. “Ah. Then, maybe I misunderstood…” 

The conversation came to an end before Eliot could respond when a man in a lab coat, presumably the doctor, came into the room. 

“Ah, Mr. West. Good to see you awake. I’m Dr. Carter. I led the operation. How are you feeling?”

“I’m alright, thanks.”

“Good. That’s good. Now, the bullet hit your spleen and got lodged in it. We were able to both remove the bullet and repair the damage without any complications, so no worries about that. We want to keep you for another day just to keep an eye on the healing process, make sure no infection sets in, but you should be okay. Make sure and keep us updated on how you’re feeling, okay? All goes well, it should only be a couple weeks recovery time.”

Eliot nodded. He was familiar with the recovery time from a gunshot wound, even one with organ damage, and he knew things would be fine eventually. 

“Do you have any questions about anything?” Dr. Carter asked. When Eliot shook his head no, he nodded. “Alright then, I’ll leave you to it. The police should be in later to get your impression of the events that lead up to the shooting. Carol? Can I talk to you outside?”

Carol left a parting smile with the three of them and followed Dr. Carter out of the room.

Alone, Parker descended. “You know, you could at least have the decency not to flirt with the nurse in front of us.”

“Girl, you know Eliot’s second language is flirting. Relax.”

Parker was scowling, but she relaxed a bit anyway. Eliot rolled his eyes and tried to move on. 

“What did happen, anyway? Any info on the gunmen?”

Hardison smirked. “Turns out, it was your average, run of the mill, robbery. They weren’t targeting us for any particular reason other than they thought we had money. You got real lucky, Alex, taking ‘em out the way you did without more than the one gunshot wound.”

Eliot accepted the alias usage and the story as a hint of what to tell the police when he was questioned. He nodded briefly, and Hardison nodded back. 

“Man,” Hardison said. “What a way to end a date, huh?”

A  _ what?  _

“Let’s hope the next one goes better,” he continued, seemingly unaware that Eliot had just bluescreened. 

“Are… did you… Hardison…” Eliot warned, and Hardison stopped. 

“Uh-oh. That’s Angry Eliot voice. What did I do this time?”

“Did you seriously invite me to third-wheel on a date between you and Parker?”

Parker frowned. “No. We invited you to come on a date with us as our date. Like all three of us on a date. Like a two person date but with all three of us. Was that not… I thought that was clear?”

Eliot froze, head reeling. What the…

“I thought I’d made it clear,” Hardison continued. Not that Eliot heard him. Everything he was saying faded into white noise as Eliot considered the impossibility of having been asked on a date. 

He’d wanted it for a long time, sure. He would have been an idiot to ignore the way he felt when he saw the two of them, especially together, and the way he had so much more patience for them than anyone else. Not much, but more. 

But the idea of them returning his feelings… He didn’t think he’d ever actually allowed himself to even consider it. He couldn’t bear the thought of hurting them, of them getting involved in his darkness, of ruining whatever it was that was brewing between the two of them, that had already brewed… they had something great, fantastic, and adding him in would be…

And yet, with the way they were looking at him, it was getting harder and harder to remind himself of the reasons he was avoiding the issues.

“So that was supposed to be a date?” He’d cut off Hardison’s ramble, but he hardly cared. 

“I mean, yeah. We asked you to have dinner with us.”

“We have dinner together all the time!”

“And you cooked for us--”

“I cook you food all the time! You wouldn’t eat anything with any nutritional content if I didn’t!”

“And I walked away saying, ‘Okay, great! It’s a date!’”

“I thought you just meant that as an idiom. It’s a very popular saying!”

“Are you just that oblivious?”

“Dammit Hardison-- wait. Wait, is that why you were so upset that I was flirting with the nurse?”

“You know, I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”

Parker coughed. “As much as I love watching you two bicker… does this mean we get a do over?”

Eliot stopped. “I’m not cooking dinner for you guys as a date.”

“But that’s not a no to the date,” Parker pointed out. 

Eliot smiled, despite himself. “No, it isn’t, is it?”

Hardison and Parker sported matching grins. Next thing Eliot knew, Hardison was bringing the hand he still gripped up to his mouth to place a kiss on the back of it, and Parker was leaping on top of him, careful to avoid his injury, smacking her lips against his cheek. 

Looks like there was an upside to getting shot after all. 

__________________________________________________________________________

**Three Weeks Later**

“So, that went well.”

Both Eliot and Parker reached out and aimed a slap at Hardison. 

“Ouch! Alright, fine. It didn’t go well. How was I supposed to know that the restaurant was a front for a money laundering ring?”

Eliot watched the last person he’d disarmed get wheeled past them on a gurney by two EMTs. He was okay enough to aim a glare at Eliot as he passed by. 

“Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Expert Hacker and Background Checker. Maybe by doing your Expert Hacking and Background Checking!”

“You suggested this place, Eliot!”

“I don’t know,” Parker interrupted. “I thought it was kind of fun.”

“You only say that because you broke your record for breaking into the Bakewell 4500 Master safe,” Hardison insisted. 

Parker grinned. “You’re not wrong.”

Eliot shifted his gaze to the head of the laundering ring being forced down into the cop car. “Worst first date ever.”

“Second date,” Parker corrected. “Our first date was worse. You got shot.”

“That wasn’t our first date. I didn’t even know it was a date! How could it have been a first date?”

“...So does that mean this is our second first date?” Hardison wondered. Parker smiled again. 

“I like that. Should we try again? Third first date?”

Eliot grimaced. “Alright. No food this time. Maybe then it’ll stick.”

__________________________________________________________________________

**One Week Later**

Eliot gingerly poked at the bruise forming on his forehead, then ducked to avoid Parker’s hand when she tried to do the same. He growled her name warningly and she pouted and moved back. 

Hardison winced when he looked at the bump. “Maybe we should get that checked out.”

“I’ll be fine. It’s just a bruise.”

“Could be a concussion.”

“I know concussions, Hardison. This isn’t a concussion.”

He knew it wasn’t because he had absolutely no problems watching Nate talk to the arresting officer’s assistant as the actual arresting officer led the leader of the Croatian mob away in chains. 

“Did this happen because we got funnel cakes?” Parker asked.

Eliot blinked. “What?”

“It’s the food right? You said it yourself. Food is cursed.”

“Food is… Parker, the Croatian mob didn’t ruin our date because we got funnel cakes. The Croatian mob ruined our date because we picked the wrong damn carnival to visit, and none of us really know how to leave well enough alone.”

“Also, because Eliot here made quite the enemy of the head of the Croatian mob ten years ago and apparently, that ass has never heard of ‘forgive and forget,’” Hardison added. 

“And all over a fucking Beatles lunchbox,” Eliot grimaced. 

Both Hardison and Parker shot him disbelieving looks. 

“...A Beatles lunch box filled with diamonds?” Parker asked. 

Eliot scoffed, but when Parker looked puzzled, he shrugged. “...It was emeralds,” he admitted grumpily. 

“Ah, it was  _ emeralds _ ,” Hardison laughed. “I  _ see.” _

Just what he needed, Hardison laughing about the fucking lunchbox. 

“Let it go,” he warned, and Hardison raised his hands defensively, but backed off. 

“Maybe carnivals are just cursed in general,” Parker mused. “Last time we went to one…”

“You didn’t go to one until after everything went to shit,” Eliot reminded her, holding back the wince that tried to come out as he remembered the ill fated trip he’d taken with Molly and the babysitter/criminal. 

“Didn’t you get a concussion at that carnival too?” Hardison asked. 

Eliot glared. “I got hit in the head with a pendulum ride!” he defended. 

“Yeah, and then you refused to go to a hospital. Just like you’re doing now, actually.”

“Let. It. Go.”

“Fine! Fine. But Parker may be right. Let’s not do any more carnivals, alright?”

“So, what are we gonna do for our fourth first date?” Parker inquired. 

Eliot and Hardison exchanged looks. What would they do, indeed?

__________________________________________________________________________

It didn’t work. None of it worked. 

They went to a museum? They stumbled across an insurance scam.

Hardison dragged them to an arcade? They ended up returning a kidnapped child to his father. 

Parker tried making them go skydiving? The pilot turned out to be an enemy of Hardison’s with a grudge. 

And so, two months after their first first date, Eliot decided he’d had enough. 

“Sit,” he commanded, pointing Parker and Hardison to the couch in their apartment living room. Hardison and Parker obliged, exchanging worried looks. Eliot ignored them, instead turning to go back into the kitchen, where he’d hidden the night’s bounty.

He retrieved the food from the oven, where it had been keeping warm, and brought the takeout containers, utensils, and drinks out to his waiting dates. 

“What’s going on?” Parker demanded when he got back. Hardison jumped up with his arms outstretched, looking like he wanted to help, but Eliot glared at him until he sat back down. 

“No more first dates,” Eliot declared, setting everything down on the coffee table. “First dates are overrated anyway. We are staying in tonight, watching a movie, and eating takeout, and once that’s over, we can say it was a date and hopefully that will break the streak. But for now, unless it’s a matter of life and death, we do not leave this couch except to go to the bathroom. Welcome to our seventh first date. Let’s hope we can finally finish one.”

He had specifically not looked at Hardison and Parker while he’d spoken. He knew he would’ve lost his nerve. Maybe he should have been looking, because the next thing he knew, there were hands on his arms, hauling him backwards, and the only thing that stopped him from letting his instincts take over was the familiarity of those hands. 

As soon as he was sitting on the couch, Parker snaked her arms around his waist and cuddled into his side, while Hardison wrapped his arms around his shoulders, and pressed a kiss to his hair. Eliot huffed impatiently, but did nothing to dislodge them. 

“Well, ain’t that just the sweetest--”

“Stop.”

Hardison pouted, but didn’t argue, instead freeing his arms from around Eliot and reaching for the food on the table.

__________________________________________________________________________

**Three Hours Later**

Eliot didn’t know if Hardison and Parker were asleep or if they were just content in the quiet, but regardless of the answer, Eliot was in no rush to dislodge them and clean up. If they were awake, neither were making any move to put another movie on now that  _ Jumanji _ was over. Not that he really minded. 

They’d finally made it through a date without an issue. There was a brief scare when Hardison had received a call from Nate an hour before, but it was just a question about an upcoming job, and Sophie was quick to pull him away as soon as she figured it out. 

And the thing was, it went  _ well. _ Eliot had been nervous that spending time at home with them was going to be weird now, but it wasn’t. It was fine. It was like any other night. 

He had a pang of worry about what that meant for how the date went, whether it was enough of a  _ date, _ but he quickly pushed it aside. It probably said more about how they were before they started dating than it did about what was happening now. He hoped. 

“Man, stop thinking,” Hardison complained sleepily. “I can hear those gears grinding from here.”

“You say that like you’re not on my shoulder,” Eliot chuckled. “I’m not… Don’t worry about it, alright?”

“Whatever,” Hardison sniffed and nuzzled his head into Eliot’s neck for a second. 

Silence ensued, and after a few minutes, Eliot felt reasonably sure his partners were asleep. Sure enough, at least, that he let his mind wander again. 

How did he even  _ get  _ here? How did those two worm their way into his heart? He’d felt reasonably sure when he’d joined up with the team that it was dead to long term anything. Even once they’d actually become a team, he thought he’d be the lone wolf. Sophie and Nate had history, and that history hadn’t gone anywhere, and from the beginning, Parker and Hardison had some sort of special something that Eliot  _ knew _ would develop if they let it. Eliot though, Eliot had been fine with friendships, with letting those relationships grow and develop, but he’d never expected to start falling for anyone. 

He’d resisted as much as possible. He went out and he romanced his way through Boston and then through Portland. He went on dates and had one night stands and he did his level best to ignore the way he was growing less and less confused by Parker and more and more comforted and amused by her, and to ignore how his bickering with Hardison was starting to sound less and less like irritation and more and more like fond exasperation. He tried to forget the minor heart attacks when he thought they were hurt, the way he knew he’d break every single rule he’d ever set for himself if it meant keeping them safe. 

It didn’t work. Every time he thought he’d left it alone, thought he’d moved on or stared caring a reasonable, normal amount, something happened that shook him, that made him remember it all. 

_ These people you are with now, would you leave any of them behind? Ever? _

_ I wanna kill him. Can we make that happen? _

_ They made Hardison, snatched him 10 minutes ago. _

_ Never do that again, man. Don't do that again. _

_ We agreed we all change. Better or worse, we change together.  _

_ If you ask me, I'm gonna tell you. So please don't ask me. _

“I love you.”

He didn’t mean to speak out loud, and he definitely didn’t mean to say those words aloud, especially not given how early on in the relationship it was. He took a second to be thankful that Parker and Hardison were asleep, because he didn’t think he ever would’ve lived it down if they weren’t.

“We love you too,” came a whisper from where Parker slept against his chest. 

… Well, so much for sleeping. 

“Love you,” Hardison murmured his assent, and Eliot couldn’t stop himself from grinning like a fool. 

“Go back to sleep,” Eliot implored. 

The only answers he got were sleepy little grunts. 

Heart full to bursting, Eliot let himself relax that last little bit, as much as he needed to fall asleep. 

Seven first dates. And Eliot wouldn’t have traded a single one. 

**Author's Note:**

> ... I cannot tell you how much reference I put in to splenectomy and gunshot wound treatment, only to decide to day "fuck it" and move on with as little discussion of it as possible. 
> 
> Also, the nurse and doctor are based off of characters from ER. And by based off of, I mean I took them exactly from ER. My sister started watching it because of Noah Wyle and Alex Kingston, and I watched quite a lot of it with her. ... Okay so I'm still watching it with her. Sometimes. 
> 
> The lines in italics at the end of the episode are taken from episodes. Those episodes are as follows, in order of appearance in the fic:  
> "The San Lorenzo Job" (Season 3, Episode 16)  
> "The Future Job" (Season 2, Episode 13)  
> "The Experimental Job" (Season 4, Episode 11)  
> "The Grave Danger Job" (Season 4, Episode 7)  
> "The Rundown Job" (Season 5, Episode 9)  
> "The Big Bang Job" (Season 3, Episode 15)
> 
> So yeah, anyway. I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
